Jody Bottum referred to the old story of the Holy Cross alumni magazine that showed an FBI agent leading away in handcuffs a priest at an anti-Vietnam protest—with both identified by their graduation years from the school.
He treated the story as possibly apocryphal, but it is, in fact, true. Memory fades, but I knew the editor of this magazine at the time, a Jesuit whose name escapes me. The issue featured a story on the Berrigans, headlined on the cover “The Burden of the Berrigans.” The photo in question was of an FBI agent escorting Philip Berrigan away, in handcuffs, with, indeed, their class identities in the caption.
The editor offered to give me extra copies for my students, which I accepted, because of interest at the height of the anti-Vietnam-war movement. The box was too heavy to mail, and he proposed that I meet him at a Holy Cross alumni event in Holyoke (near my home).
So I went, to find a room full of men (Holy Cross wasn’t yet coed) well on their way to inebriation. I retreated to the corridor and was relieved to find a Jesuit collar with a familiar face above it headed my way. He told me how much he hated these events, then led me out to the parking lot. We moved our cars to a dark corner and transferred the box of magazines, like contraband, and I took the magazines back and gave them out to any students who wanted one. Everyone found that photo wryly funny, of course.
